Tonight, in a sort of Jurassic Park-manoeuvre, surviving genetic material from ludicrous late-‘90s punk band, Stegg, is used to reconstruct it from the ground up and to breathe fresh life into a dinosaur which has not wandered the venues of London these five years past. Tonight is the tenth anniversary of Stegg’s slightly shambolic, yet endearingly intimate, debut in the upstairs room of the Rose & Crown in Croydon. Tonight old friends, producers and ‘rockumentary’ makers come together for the first time in years to capture a glimpse of the Steggosaurus in its natural habitat. Tonight members of Not-Too-Distant Future, Trapped In Amber and Blind Carbon Copy finally give in to audience demands for ’Cheeseburger’ in a vain attempt to get on with the rest of their lives as ’serious’ musicians (not really).

This is a sympathetic (or bemused) crowd and Stegg give them some good-old-fashioned-rock’n’roll-night-out-fun. I don’t know whether it’s the in-jokes, ridiculous costumes or the onstage-audience banter but there’s something about the atmosphere tonight that puts me in mind of a NOFX show. Here, however, the similarity ends for the band have actually rehearsed (albeit only three times) but mercifully this is not enough for them to take it too seriously. Stegg’s greatest achievement tonight is to reinterpret the old songs in a way which allows them to demonstrate their vastly improved musicianship but which does not detract from the inherent silliness which was their hallmark. If anything, the modified renditions enhance the original silliness and do nothing to obscure the band’s advanced appreciation of the absurd.

Due to having been in a fairly constant state of evolution during their existence, Stegg’s material tonight is a strange mixture. Although numbers are by-and-large delivered at a lively pace in a smiley sort of way, there are sufficiently diverse wares on sale here to attract most persons of the guitar-based persuasion to the bazaar. Early teenage punk songs jostle round the traders carpets and noisily bid against mid period indie ballads and latter-day hints at Not-Too-Distant Future’s more ambitious song writing while the Yaverian Sploo’s novelty tirades of insanity about juggs, twiggs and anything ending in ’gg’ yell over everyone else at the top of their peculiar voices. Step right up sir. Can I interest you in classic punk cover ’Everybody Burps’? The sheep levels on the vocals are of a previously unprecedented level. Or does sir have a penchant for the thrash of ’Rainy Day’? Oh, sir would like to writhe in the mental agony of the Dance of the ’Chemical Change’? No? You seek the newly-anglicised version of superior Weezer pastiche ‘Please Don’t Tread On My Cheeseburger’? You want chilli sauce with that? Ohhh…sir is a discerning customer and seeks the touching voyeurism of ‘True Love’…or just the extended musical limerick that is ‘Mark’? Roll up. Roll up. Send in the clowns. And so forth.

Like the makers of Jurassic Park, and as in all good fear-of-science stories, Stegg are unstable and the world (outside this pub) still isn’t ready for them yet and so they have been destroyed again but left the possibility of a sequel open.

It only remains to offer a brief apology to Lockup - I was too busy catching-up to listen to their set but I’ll try and review the CD soon.

If anyone would like to get their paws on Stegg’s album They Always Get You In The End (2000) copies are available here at a most reasonable price.